Utilitarianism can only treat people consistently by denying their sense of being ethical agents.
Evidence
Soon enough, the duty of causal optimality becomes infi nitely selfreferential, and the individual becomes lost within a framework that achieves its goal of consistent ethical treatment only by denying the basis on which individuals have come to think of themselves as distinctive ethical agents. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 122
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Welfare maximization self-undermines by denying the collective community’s existence and judgment it depends on — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 59; Being an ethical agent requires supplying non-externally-dictated reasons for acting. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 120; Trying to deny one’s responsibility presupposes the very universal value it refuses. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 11 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Utilitarianism defines wrongness purely as inflicting pain on others
#expands(0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3861 - Trying to deny one’s responsibility presupposes the very universal value it refuses.
#corroborates(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 11 - Prevailing rationality represses all values it cannot operationally validate.
#corroborates(0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 6